On 25 January 2011, Egyptian police shot and killed Mustafa Ragab Mahmoud, a nineteen-
year-old high school dropout, in the Arbayeen district of the Suez. Mahmoud, one of several …

This chapter offers an analysis of conditions in the MENA countries on the eve of the Arab
Spring wave of revolutions from the World System perspective, as well as the causes …

In this chapter we consider new aspects of the above discussed issues on the basis of
various databases. We highlight the strategic conclusions to be drawn from our analysis. In …

Legitimacy is a key concept in political science. It has deep normative roots in democratic
theory and refers usually to righteous, just, fair, and therefore acceptable rule. However, non …

Survey research has expanded in the Arab world since the 1980s. The Arab Spring marked
a watershed when surveying became possible in Tunisia and Libya, and researchers added …

A large literature expects rising middle classes to promote democracy. However, few studies
provide direct evidence on this group in nondemocratic settings. This article focuses on …

The literature on civil resistance finds that nonviolent campaigns are more likely to succeed
than violent insurgencies. A parallel literature on democratization poses mass mobilization …

Abstract The Arab Spring acted as a trigger for a global wave of socio-political
destabilization that significantly exceeded the scale of the Arab Spring itself and affected …

This special issue demonstrates that authoritarian legislatures often matter for their
countries' policy processes in myriad ways, despite the fact that their influence is constrained …

Drawing on evidence from the 2011 Egyptian uprising, this article demonstrates how the use
of two social media platforms–Facebook and Twitter–contributed to a discrete mobilizational …